


Remedial Courses

by skidblast



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Medical Examination, Medical Experimentation, Medical Jargon, Medical Procedures, Medical Professionals, Necropsy, References to Genocide, References to cruel experimentation, Using dead cows to learn about biology, questionable medical procedures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-11 06:26:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28466775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skidblast/pseuds/skidblast
Summary: As Earth joins the council of worlds, and the Lost Light is no longer flying around, Ratchet sees his next avenue as assisting the humans, by learning their medical needs. And that means going to the most knowledgeable Cybertronian about "squishies" biology. And Ratchet is not impressed with his new teacher or his lessons.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 32
Collections: Secret Solenoid '20-'21





	Remedial Courses

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fantasygashapon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fantasygashapon/gifts).



“You have got to be yanking my chain.” Ratchet said as he looked at the file. After Earth joined the Council of Worlds, First Aid becoming the CMO and the Lost Light being torn down, Ratchet had decided to expand his knowledge base, especially in regards of the humans. While he had quite the extensive knowledge of the Cybertronian anatomy and even other mechanoid anatomy, he hadn’t branched out to the organic, “squishy”, anatomy.

And it looked like there was only one other cybertronian that had learned it and survived the war.

“That’s what it says.” Flatline said. “Spinister is quite the wiz in this business. He’s even looking forward to attending some medical conferences on Earth, though I have to admit I tried to discourage him from it.”

“How so?” Ratchet asked. While Flatline was a Decepticon, he had taken up the role of Cybertron’s leading physician after Ratchet left with the Lost Light.

“Well, while he knows enough to diagnose the basics and even do emergency field surgery, you do realise why a Decepticon would bother to study that sort of thing, right?”

Ratchet frowned as he considered it. Flatline was correct, the Decepticons would have studied organic anatomy and medicine for the reasons better not shared among the organic beings.

“And Earth has not set up any sort of information exchange program yet, so approaching them for it would be moot.” Ratchet muttered. 

“Looks like that if you want to start now and not in a decade or two, you should, huh, speak of the devil.”

Ratchet turned around and saw Spinister walking in, with somebody’s arm slung over his shoulder. Ratchet just put his hand against his face, not daring to ask what had happened.

“You talking about me?” Spinister asked, having apparently caught what Flatline had said.

“Yes.” Flatline’s voice suddenly took a more cheerful tone to it. “Ratchet here was trying to find someone to teach him some organic biology and anatomy.”

“Cool. Didn’t know the Autobots were interested in that sort of thing.” Spinister said as he put the arm down on the table in front of Flatline. “There is a guy coming for this later.” He said to Flatline before turning back to Ratchet. “You got some specific type of organics in mind?” 

Ratchet hemmed a bit, having not anticipated the question and it took him a moment to realize what Spinister was asking for. “Human.” He quickly answered. “There’s a difference?”

“Of course.” Spinister said. “Come with me, I saw a human on the way over here.” Spinister didn’t even stop as he turned and left Flatline’s office. Ratchet didn’t really have the chance to ask him just what he was up to, so he followed. He was aware that the atmospheric conditions on Cybertron were favorable for humans, but he hadn’t seen that many of them around. There was Blackrock and Fairborn that frequented the planet, but pretty much no one else.

So when he saw Spinister make his way directly to a human he didn’t recognize, he wondered just how badly this was going to go.

“Hey MP3!” Spinister called out.

“Oh for the last time, I’m not part of the PR disaster that is the Admin Force.” The human said, a red haired woman that Ratchet recognized as one of the main military contacts from Earth. “What do you want now?”

“This guy wants to learn about you squishies, so I’m gonna ask him one question to figure out how much he knows already.” Spinister said. Ratchet was partly afraid he would pick up the human which would be a completely new Public Relations disaster, but Spinister just turned to face Ratchet.

“So, how many organisms is that?” Spinister asked.

Ratchet didn’t even recognize the question as legitimate, it wasn’t until the silence grew a bit too long and he could hear the woman mutter something intelligible, clearly not interested in being a test subject.

“Pardon?” Ratchet asked.

“How many organisms is that?” Spinister now pointed directly at her.

“One.” Ratchet answered and crossed his arms. He had optics, he knew how to count. If this was the start of Spinister’s teachings, he was not impressed.

“Great.” Spinister said. “Now I know how much you know. Meet me at Flatline’s in two days, I need to get something from Earth for your first lesson.” Spinister didn’t even bother to say farewells as he walked off towards the space bridge.

“What was that about?” The woman asked as she looked at Spinister leaving.

“Apparently this is the Cybertronian most knowledgeable about your anatomy and biology.” Ratchet answered. “And he’s going to be teaching me.” Spinister was out of sight for both of them. As Not-MP3 turned, Ratchet took a short step to get her attention.

“Tell me.” Ratchet hesitated for a moment, knowing how bizarre his question would be. “You are just one organism, right?” Ratchet asked.

“As far as I know.” She shrugged. “Good luck. I’ve had worse teachers. And try to tell him my name is Scarlett, if I’m going to be seeing him more.” She turned around and left Ratchet alone in his confused state.

* * *

Ratchet half-hoped that Spinister would not show up. Flatline was at least ready, having cleared out a single room for Spinister and Ratchet to use. There were few tools of the trade in there, and a couple of tables. Spinister was already there, standing next to the table where a box laid on it.

“Ready for the basics?” Spinister asked.

“I was the Autobot CMO for the entire war, I think I’m past basics.” Ratchet said.

“No, you’re not.” Spinister said and opened the box. He laid down a dead animal, easily five-ten times the weight of a human.

“Autopsy?” Ratchet asked as he inspected the animal.

“No. More basic.” Spinister said, then took out of the box a smaller box. Ratchet watched as he opened that one as well, revealing two very small vials. Whatever that was in those vials was much smaller than Thundercracker’s pet, barely visible. It took Ratchet a moment to recall when driving on earth, there were tiny flying animals that couldn’t move out of his way while he was driving, but not even the humans complained about that. Insects, that was it.

“Two most basic methods of larger movement for the organics on Earth.” Spinister said. “There is a third one but I couldn’t get a sample of it on such a short notice.”

Ratchet bent down to one of the vials, noticing a small insect, curled up dead inside. In the other one there was an alive one, of the same type.

“So, figure out how to make the dead ones move.” Spinister said. “And tell me how you go about it.”

Ratchet recoiled back and sputtered. “They’re dead!” He yelled.

“That’s what I said.” Spinister said. “I want to see the large one move at least, you just have to explain how to make the small one move since Flatline does not have the tools to operate on so small of a thing.”

Ratchet looked at the large dead animal. It clearly walked on four legs, and he recalled seeing plenty of them while he was on Earth, reared as some domesticated animal than anything else. He took one of the hind legs of the animal and moved it about, looking at Spinister at the same time.

“Not with your hands.” Spinister said. “You have to get the basics before I can teach you more.”

Ratchet let the leg go. “After you left, the human said he has had worse teachers. I feel tempted to find him again just to prove him wrong.”

Spinister didn’t answer as he picked up a small stunning device, used to fight back against some of the more difficult patients. Ratchet just watched as he put it up against the leg of the dead animal, and activated it.

The leg twitched.

“There, it moved.” Spinister said. “Figure out how and we can get to the next lesson. As for the spiders, if you try the same you might destroy them. That’s why you got a dead one and a live one. I’ll be back in a few hours to check up on your progress.”

* * *

“Finally.” Ratchet muttered as he put aside the low-voltage prod. He had finished his checks and rechecks on the cow carcass. He had made that leg twitch time and time again, but now he knew why.

Instead of using a type of fiber optics that could produce different types of signal to the rest of the body, the organic body had somehow incorporated electricity into their body, and used that as a signal. There was an obvious downside to it, as only one type of signal could be transmitted, so it was a binary transmission. Simple, but inelegant. The signal caused the muscles in the legs to contract. Or at least in the case when he used an external device to run electricity through the body. There was probably a lot more to it, but he hoped that if it was so, he would learn it in time.

Examining the spider however, showed that the legs were already contracted. But using methods he had already used in examining the cow, he noticed that there was also electricity transmission, but the “muscles” were different. Instead of some organic looking mass that reacted to electricity, Ratchet saw something far more familiar. Pneumatics. This he could understand. The legs contracted because the fluid had evaporated sometimes after death, and the living spider showed it had perfect command of its legs. A non-invasive scan of it showed that he was correct.

So Ratchet wrote down his findings, and when Spinister came, he handed his report over.

“Good work.” Spinister said after reading through it and handed Ratchet another datapad. “Here’s my work on it, a bit more thorough.”

“If you already had this ready, then why put me through this?” Ratchet asked.

“For some reason no one wants to take my word on it.” Spinister shrugged. “And Krok says that it also has something to do with mechs not willing to learn that things are different from us.”

“I do keep an open mind.” Ratchet said, not to excuse himself.

“Great.” Spinister said. “I got your next test ready for you. Want to do it now or later?” He leaned over to the carcass and poked at it. “Maybe later, this has taken some abuse.”

“Later would be proper, I want to read over your text to see what I might have missed.” Ratchet said as he waved the datapad he had gotten from Spinister.

“Great, I’ll see you tomorrow.” Spinister said. “I’ll try to get another one of the same species for you, if not just for familiarity.”

* * *

Ratchet looked at the carcass. It wasn’t human at least, but it wasn’t a cow. It was the same size however.

“Find the organs analogous to energon.” Spinister said before he left. Apparently Ratchet was still going to be learning the basics instead of being told what those organs were.

The problem was that the last lesson seemed to be about how simple the system in organics was, but the energon system was as simple as it got. Cybertronians consumed energon, and it got evenly distributed in their body, providing them energy where it was needed. He had seen human injuries before, and a simple cut provided him with the fact that the animal in front of him was just as same. Red liquid coated the blade he had cut with, and quickly coated the wound as well. He wondered how fresh this body was, but he was here so he would be able to answer that question later.

“Fine,” Ratchet muttered to himself as he found the source of the red fluid. “Comes from callipiaries, let’s trace it.”

Soon enough the body was crisscrossed in cuts, and Ratchet found the central organ. Holding it up, he examined it more closely, seeing the four chambers in it. Quick electric test showed how it would move, a beat of the powerful muscles making sure that the fluid would be circulating throughout the body.

The problem was that he didn’t see any intake. But there were plenty of organs left in the body. The fluid went to them all, but still pretty much equally. No other organ was as central as the four-chambered muscle.

So Ratchet went for the obvious route. He knew that on the face there was the opening where organics on earth put their materials to be consumed. One ended up in sort of a dead end, a pair of organs which could be inflated. Organics did need some gases, with Earth lifeforms using oxygen. But that was no energon.

The other path was more promising. It ended up in a sack like organ with foul acids inside, probably powerful enough to break down whatever it consumed. But it continued, to the long coiling snake-like organ and then terminated at another end of the animal, into the open.

Ratchet considered it. The first lesson had been more about simplification. Maybe this was about larger differences? He dismissed the gas organ. Cybertronians also used various types of gases to aid with combustion, organics probably did the same. So the sack and the coiled organ probably broke down what the organics consumed. And if it was broken down into small enough pieces, then it could pass through the lining of the organ and then into the stream of the red fluid.

Two different systems for the equivalent of energon. That was what it looked like, so Ratchet wrote that down.

* * *

“Great, you’re willing to learn.” Spinister said as he read over Ratchet’s report.

“I take it that not everyone has passed these simple tests?” Ratchet asked. The tests were unusual, and even infuriating, but the hands off approach Spinister used felt more respectful. Instead of being lorded over, Ratchet had to figure things out on his own.

“More than half.” Spinister shrugged. “But anyone who gets this far usually gets the whole way. What do you think?” He asked.

“About organics or about your teaching methods?” Ratchet carefully asked, not sure which one it was that Spinister was referring to.

“Both.” Spinister said.

“For the organics, I knew that there was going to be an appreciable difference between us and them. For your teaching methods, I did not expect the same when I first came to it, but I believe I can make this work.”

“Got any questions then before I prepare you for the next lesson?” Spinister asked.

Ratchet was about to ask what it was about, but he knew better. There was the question Spinister had asked him at the start of it, which apparently determined that Ratchet needed to know the basics first.

“Just how many organisms was that human?” Ratchet asked.

“Two to the power of forty-five.” Spinister answered. “I’ll cover that in lesson four of the basics.”


End file.
